This is really Scott Gula. My account wouldn't let me post for some reason, so Tyler let me post through his account. In no way do the ideas presented in this post reflect the views of Tyler.
Here's a story about a women named Laura Mallory, from Loganville a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia who is on her second crusade to remove Harry Potter from school libraries. She says Harry Potter is trying to indoctrinate children as wiccans or practitioners of religious witchcraft. She claims the reason behind violent acts such as school shootings, are due to the evil promoted by books such as Harry Potter. According to her, these actions wouldn't happen if children read the Bible instead.
This could be the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Why is it that fanatical Christians think that Harry Potter is corrupting their children? I don't understand how people can think these books are attempting to turn their children into witches. The intentions behind Harry Potter are not those of Wiccan propaganda, it is the story of a woman and her child trying to make enough money off her books to survive. Mallory should realize that people aren't stupid enough to believe in magic and spells. Kids these days don't read Harry Potter to learn the ingredients to polyjuice potion or to find out how to defeat a dementor, they read the books because they are thrilling works of literature.
If anything the Harry Potter books have done more good than bad. Kids these days don't read enough, but because of Harry Potter an entire generation of children have been inspired to explore the world of literature. Kids stop watching TV and playing video games to read these books. And besides even if a child wants to believe in magic and wizards, what's so bad about having a little imaginaion?
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My eight-year old brother just finished reading the last Harry Potter book. Up until he began reading this series, he wouldn’t touch a book. And now he has read 7 big chapter books. If Mallory had tried to get him to read the bible, well, she would have just been wasting her time. Harry Potter did not turn my brother into a wiccan, it simply got him involved in reading. Normally he would watch cartoons all morning, but Harry Potter turned his interests to reading all morning.
I started reading the Harry Potter books when they first came out. I had no idea how popular they would become. However, because my grandma encouraged me to give the first book a try, I spent countless hours deep in Harry's world and became a better reader because of it. And I'd like to think that I turned out ok.
Moreover, I don't think it's anybody's business to be banning what we can agree are harmless books. Kids use Harry Potter (and other similar books) as an escape. These books are another world, an alternate reality. However, I'm reasonably sure that nearly everyone who reads these books can leave that reality and come to this one just fine. And if Ms. Mallory is worried about school shottings, she should really focus on parental control and gun laws, not fantasy literature.
I think you all vastly underestimate the influence of the international Wiccan conspiracy.
Don't say you weren't warned.
This topic reminded me of the conversation that we had a few weeks ago about the correlation between video games and violence. In both instances, the blame is shifted away from personal responsibility and put onto another source. Instead of the mother looking for what she might have done to cause her son to become a little devil, she blames Harry Potter. At some point, we have to become accountable for our own actions and decisions instead of trying to shirk responsibility and point a finger at someone else.
I am amazed by those people who think that this series is "witchcraft" and "devilish". It's a book! It's simply an imaginative series that encourages children to think outside of the box a little. Read the Bible, really? Some would say this is more imaginative than Harry Potter. Forcing children to read the Bible screams instant adulthood to me. All of the various facets and the depth of the Bible is way too extensive for an 8 year old to handle. Isn't the simple fact that these children are reading the most important thing? Let's evaluate our priorities people!
I spent most of my childhood in fantasy land, Hogwarts only one of the many. Should less know books, like Artemis Fowl and the Golden Compass be banned as well? Despite the fact that I spent a summer reading the Artemis Fowl books and viewing his world through the eyes of an evil mastermind, I have turned out (relatively) normal. As has been said over and over, these books simply got me reading, and allowed me to escape from my own boring cliche suburban life for hours at a time.
There are lots of bad things in the world - violence in schools is definitely one of them. It goes right up there with cancer, poverty, and the rise in Chipotle prices. It's natural to want someone to blame for bad things. Your cat runs in front of a car? Blame the driver. You get a papercut? Blame the paper. School shooting? Blame...Harry Potter?
It's a little like the hype that surrounds the risk of cancer. Smoking raises the risk of cancer. This fact is large and in charge - the statistics say so. Then we have the plastic scare: certain kinds of plastics that we've been using in our water bottles for years may increase the risk of cancer. Okay. That could be legit. But then you get to the stupid stuff. Like how eating microwave popcorn also increases the risk of cancer. (No joke. Look it up.)Well geez, everything causes cancer. Breathing the air increases the risk of cancer!
Point? You can only take the blame so far. If Harry Potter is really promotes school shootings, then what in our culture today hasn't contributed to violence in school?
Maybe Harry Potter did inspire some kid to be violent in school, but speaking of books that have caused heated discussion or even violence, (over religion, of course)how about the Bible?
Bad things happen. Leave Potter alone.
P.S. For a funny mental image, draw to mind the kind of kid you imagine being violent in school: the kid that stabs another kid with a pen, the kid that shocks the class with a gun...
And picture said kid reading Harry Potter.
Awesome.
Laura raises an interesting point in bringing up The Golden Compass in this context, as Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is explicitly anti-Christian in orientation.
From Wikipedia (so you know it's true)
"Pullman has expressed surprise over "I've been surprised by how little criticism I've got. Harry Potter's been taking all the flak...Meanwhile, I've been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God."
Can Wiccan school bombings be far behind?
I enjoyed Pullman's Golden Compass and the following books quite a bit, and he does indeed feature God as an old decrepit impostor who ends up dead a few minutes after his entrance into the book. I don't agree with this theology, but the books made me think about things as a young 12 or 13 year-old reader.
For the movie they took out all the religious tones, as far as I could tell, so no one got too upset about it. I'm not sure why the books didn't make more of a splash.
I liked Whitney's point about the Bible being far too complex for any young kid to understand, but most of these fundamentalists are probably reading it literally, and are not concerned with such subtleties as symbolism or critical thought.
And I think everyone agrees that Harry Potter is harmless, and that Wiccans are not an imminent threat to our schools.
I was a nanny this summer and the kids I watched ranged from ages 2 to 12. Quinn, the twelve year-old boy never found much interest in reading before, but since his parents bought him the Harry Potter series this summer, he can't put them down. So what if Harry Potter involves dementors and occasional violence. Aren't the TV shows and video games kids are exposed to much more violent than Harry Potter? Plus, I would rather have my child reading than sitting in front of the television for hours on end.
Also, who says the bible is not violent? For those of you who haven't read the bible there is sodomy, murder, incest, and animal sacrifice all throughout the Old Testament. While the Bible undoubtedly teaches Christian values and does not promote violence, there are still violent and even scandalous elements to it. Similarly, there are some violent elements in Harry Potter, but the message of the book does not preach violence. Not to mention, reading the bible is a task far too advanced for the mind of a twelve year-old child.
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